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Tag Archives: Punjab
Come and discover THE RAJ HOTEL …!
I’m exited to share with you that my novel THE EMERALD AFFAIR (Book 1 in the new RAJ HOTEL SERIES) has been chosen as an Amazon First Reads for December (ahead of its publication on 1st January 2020) so is now available on Amazon.UK and Amazon.AU
As the night draws in, there’s nothing I like more than an epic love story (envisage the drama of The English Patient) that sweeps you away to a wonderful setting and leaves your heart full and ultimately uplifted. In The Emerald Affair, Janet MacLeod Trotter delivers just that, pure indulgence! – Sammia Hamer, publisher
For those not in the UK or Australia, it’s available on pre-order.
Hope you enjoy it!
All the best
Janet
TEA FOR THREE … and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
THE THREE INDIA TEA NOVELS are keeping each other company in the Amazon bestseller charts, as we go into the New Year ….
The India Tea Series – Amazon.com
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!
Tea, tigers and tennis! The true story that inspired THE PLANTER’S BRIDE novel
Invitation to the paperback launch of my new novel THE PLANTER’S BRIDE –
If anyone is in Morpeth, Northumberland on SATURDAY 7th JUNE then come along to The Chantry Museum at 3pm for a trip back in time to 1920’s India!
Unique cine footage that my forester grandfather filmed in the foothills of the Himalayas and never before shown in public will provide the backdrop to readings from the novel. Take a look at the taster clip showing my mum and uncle being transported in a basket on top of a mule along narrow mountain tracks!
Tales of tigers, tennis and tea parties …. I’ll be talking about the real life experience of my grandparents in India who trekked into remote parts of the Himalayas – and how this inspired the latest novel in my India Tea Series.
The event is free but to book a place please email: morpeth.tic@northumberland.gov.uk
or telephone: 01670 623455
HERE COMES THE BRIDE! – *New Novel out now*
THE PLANTER’S BRIDE – sequel to THE TEA PLANTER’S DAUGHTER – is now available as an ebook.
The story is partly inspired by my maternal grandparents, having discovered diaries and letters written by them, giving rich detail of their lives in India in the 1920s and 30s. Granddad Bob worked for the India Forest Service and my intrepid Granny Sydney followed him out from Scotland to marry and live the itinerant life of a forester’s wife.
My granny in her wedding dress in a garden in Lahore is featured on the cover!
They trekked through remote parts of the Himalayan foothills – and when they became parents, the kids went too! My mum Sheila, as a baby, was hoist in a pram on poles and carried through the jungles and along mountainous pathways along with the tents and supplies! 
The new novel follows the fortunes of two cousins, Sophie and Tilly, who leave post 1st World War Britain behind and head for adventure in India – Sophie determined to find out the truth behind her parents sudden death in the tea planting area of Assam 15 years previously …
Available now on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and other Amazon sites, as well as Kobo, Nook, Apple and other tablets and ereaders.
ANYONE FOR TIGERS AND TENNIS? – forgotten diaries of India in the 1920s
Recently, I have come across old diaries and letters written in India by my maternal grandparents in the 1920s and 1930s, where my granddad was a forester with the Indian Forest Service. Bob Gorrie had been a gunner in the First World War and survivor of trench warfare (one of the ‘mortar-mongers’ as he nicknamed them). He kept diaries of that ‘adventure’ too, but that’s a whole other story!
On his return to Scotland, he trained in Edinburgh at the University – there’s seems to have been a lot of rowing, tea dances and theatre trips in between lectures on tree species and Hindustani – Bob was relishing life post Flanders. There was a whirlwind romance with sophisticated Sydney Easterbrook (a wow on the dance floor) and then he was off to the Punjab, leaving his fiancee to follow a year later …
As a writer and researcher, I am absolutely hooked on my grandparents story – their life in India leaps off the page – and I’m drinking tea, marking trees, auctioning timber, riding under moonlight and playing ‘topping’ games of tennis alongside them!
Oh, yes – and I’m wearing a brooch made out of a tiger’s claw from a man-eating tiger that my grandfather shot and named Gwendoline …
My next novel – a sequel to the Tea Planter’s Daughter – is taking form and taking my characters back to India in the ’20s. Over the next few months I’ll share slices of that long gone era on this blog – with the help of Bob and Sydney.
Retro look at the world – photos from India: 1920s Himalayas to 1970s overland travel!
In 1923 my granny left Edinburgh and went out to India to marry my grandfather in Lahore (now in Pakistan). They spent the 20s and 30s living and working in the Punjab and foothills of the Himalayas – Bob Gorrie was a forester.
Over 50 years later, I followed in their footsteps by going out east on an overland bus …
Retronaut – 1970’s Overlanders
Anyone interested in the pictorial history of these times, should take a look at an interesting site called Retronaut, which provides time-capsules of ordinary people’s experiences through old photos and film.
My two capsules are on there, and there are dozens more – a treasure trove for the writer or researcher!
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